Important Quotations Explained

Important Quotations Explained

Important Quotations Explained

Important Quotations Explained

Important Quotations Explained

The
raven himself is hoarse That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan Under my battlements. Come, you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full Of direst cruelty. Make thick my blood, Stop up th’access and passage to remorse, That no compunctious visitings of nature Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between Th’ effect and it. Come to my woman’s breasts, And take my milk for gall, you murd’ring ministers, Wherever in your sightless substances You wait on nature’s mischief. Come, thick night, And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell, That my keen knife see not the wound it makes, Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark, To cry ‘Hold, hold!’

Lady Macbeth speaks these words in Act
1, scene 5, lines 36–52,
as she awaits the arrival of King Duncan at her castle. We have
previously seen Macbeth’s uncertainty about whether he should take
the crown by killing Duncan. In this speech, there is no such confusion, as
Lady Macbeth is clearly willing to do whatever is necessary to seize
the throne. Her strength of purpose is contrasted with her husband’s
tendency to waver. This speech shows the audience that Lady Macbeth
is the real steel behind Macbeth and that her ambition will be strong
enough to drive her husband forward. At the same time, the language
of this speech touches on the theme of masculinity— “unsex me here
/ . . . / . . . Come to my woman’s breasts, / And take my milk for
gall,” Lady Macbeth says as she prepares herself to commit murder.
The language suggests that her womanhood, represented by breasts
and milk, usually symbols of nurture, impedes her from performing
acts of violence and cruelty, which she associates with manliness.
Later, this sense of the relationship between masculinity and violence
will be deepened when Macbeth is unwilling to go through with the
murders and his wife tells him, in effect, that he needs to “be
a man” and get on with it.

2.

If
it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well It were done quickly. If th’assassination Could trammel up the consequence, and catch With his surcease success: that but this blow Might be the be-all and the end-all, here, But here upon this bank and shoal of time, We’d jump the life to come. But in these cases We still have judgement here, that we but teach Bloody instructions which, being taught, return To plague th’inventor. This even-handed justice Commends th’ingredience of our poisoned chalice To our own lips. He’s here in double trust: First, as I am his kinsman and his subject, Strong both against the deed; then, as his host, Who should against his murderer shut the door, Not bear the knife myself. Besides, this Duncan Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been So clear in his great office, that his virtues Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued against The deep damnation of his taking-off, And pity, like a naked new-born babe, Striding the blast, or heaven’s cherubin, horsed Upon the sightless couriers of the air, Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye That tears shall drown the wind. I have no spur To prick the sides of my intent, but only Vaulting ambition which o’erleaps itself And falls on th’other.

In this soliloquy, which is found in
Act 1, scene 7, lines 1–28,
Macbeth debates whether he should kill Duncan. When he lists Duncan’s noble
qualities (he “[h]ath borne his faculties so meek”) and the loyalty
that he feels toward his king (“I am his kinsman and his subject”),
we are reminded of just how grave an outrage it is for the couple
to slaughter their ruler while he is a guest in their house. At the
same time, Macbeth’s fear that “[w]e still have judgement here, that
we but teach / Bloody instructions which, being taught, return /
To plague th’inventor,” foreshadows the way that his deeds will eventually
come back to haunt him. The imagery in this speech is dark—we hear
of “bloody instructions,” “deep damnation,” and a “poisoned chalice”—and
suggests that Macbeth is aware of how the murder would open the
door to a dark and sinful world. At the same time, he admits that
his only reason for committing murder, “ambition,” suddenly seems
an insufficient justification for the act. The destruction that
comes from unchecked ambition will continue to be explored as one
of the play’s themes. As the soliloquy ends, Macbeth seems to resolve
not to kill Duncan, but this resolve will only last until his wife
returns and once again convinces him, by the strength of her will,
to go ahead with their plot.

3.

Whence
is that knocking?— How is’t with me, when every noise appals me? What hands are here! Ha, they pluck out mine eyes. Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather The multitudinous seas incarnadine, Making the green one red.

Macbeth says this in Act 2, scene 2,
lines 55–61. He has
just murdered Duncan, and the crime was accompanied by supernatural portents.
Now he hears a mysterious knocking on his gate, which seems to promise
doom. (In fact, the person knocking is Macduff, who will indeed
eventually destroy Macbeth.) The enormity of Macbeth’s crime has
awakened in him a powerful sense of guilt that will hound him throughout
the play. Blood, specifically Duncan’s blood, serves as the symbol
of that guilt, and Macbeth’s sense that “all great Neptune’s ocean”
cannot cleanse him—that there is enough blood on his hands to turn
the entire sea red—will stay with him until his death. Lady Macbeth’s
response to this speech will be her prosaic remark, “A little water
clears us of this deed” (2.2.65). By the
end of the play, however, she will share Macbeth’s sense that Duncan’s
murder has irreparably stained them with blood.

4.

Out,
damned spot; out, I say. One, two,—why, then ’tis time to do’t.
Hell is murky. Fie, my lord, fie, a soldier and afeard? What need
we fear who knows it when none can call our power to account? Yet
who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in
him?

These words are spoken by Lady Macbeth
in Act 5, scene 1, lines 30–34,
as she sleepwalks through Macbeth’s castle on the eve of his battle
against Macduff and Malcolm. Earlier in the play, she possessed a
stronger resolve and sense of purpose than her husband and was the
driving force behind their plot to kill Duncan. When Macbeth believed
his hand was irreversibly bloodstained earlier in the play, Lady
Macbeth had told him, “A little water clears us of this deed” (2.2.65).
Now, however, she too sees blood. She is completely undone by guilt
and descends into madness. It may be a reflection of her mental
and emotional state that she is not speaking in verse; this is one
of the few moments in the play when a major character—save for the
witches, who speak in four-foot couplets—strays from iambic pentameter. Her
inability to sleep was foreshadowed in the voice that her husband
thought he heard while killing the king—a voice crying out that
Macbeth was murdering sleep. And her delusion that there is a bloodstain
on her hand furthers the play’s use of blood as a symbol of guilt.
“What need we fear who knows it when none can call our power to
account?” she asks, asserting that as long as her and her husband’s
power is secure, the murders they committed cannot harm them. But
her guilt-racked state and her mounting madness show how hollow
her words are. So, too, does the army outside her castle. “Hell
is murky,” she says, implying that she already knows that darkness
intimately. The pair, in their destructive power, have created their own
hell, where they are tormented by guilt and insanity.

5.

She
should have died hereafter. There would have been a time for such a word. Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow Creeps in this petty pace from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time. And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle. Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.

These words are uttered by Macbeth after
he hears of Lady Macbeth’s death, in Act 5, scene 5, lines 16–27.
Given the great love between them, his response is oddly muted,
but it segues quickly into a speech of such pessimism and despair—one
of the most famous speeches in all of Shakespeare—that the audience
realizes how completely his wife’s passing and the ruin of his power
have undone Macbeth. His speech insists that there is no meaning
or purpose in life. Rather, life “is a tale / Told by an idiot,
full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing.” One can easily understand
how, with his wife dead and armies marching against him, Macbeth
succumbs to such pessimism. Yet, there is also a defensive and self-justifying quality
to his words. If everything is meaningless, then Macbeth’s awful
crimes are somehow made less awful, because, like everything else,
they too “signify nothing.”

Macbeth’s statement that “[l]ife’s but a poor player /
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage” can be read as Shakespeare’s somewhat
deflating reminder of the illusionary nature of the theater. After
all, Macbeth is only a “player” himself, strutting on an Elizabethan
stage. In any play, there is a conspiracy of sorts between the audience
and the actors, as both pretend to accept the play’s reality. Macbeth’s
comment calls attention to this conspiracy and partially explodes
it—his nihilism embraces not only his own life but the entire play.
If we take his words to heart, the play, too, can be seen as an
event “full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing.”